GOLF

GOLF; Jacobsen Back in Swing at Pebble Beach

By LARRY DORMAN,

Published: February 6, 1995

PEBBLE BEACH, Calif., Feb. 5—
Here at the place where careers are revived, where the cold, misty air and rocky cliffs work as some sort of mystical elixir, another lost golfer returned to the Garden today. Peter Jacobsen, 40, who has not won a golf tournament in five years, whose career briefly took a turn toward the television booth, planted both feet firmly on the ground and won the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am.

In a performance as close to flawless as the old golf course has seen, Jacobsen did not bogey a hole, did not miss a green and did not give any of his pursuers a chance to catch him. His round of 65 gave him a total of 271, 17 under par, a 72-hole tournament record, and a two-stroke victory over David Duval, who closed with a 67.

More than all that, it gave him a renewed sense of self. Just as Johnny Miller did here last year when he broke a seven-year victory drought, Jacobsen reminded a legion of fans that what used to be can still be, that he can still play the game. But where Miller's victory had elements of allegory, this victory was as solid as the cliffs at Big Sur.

"Two days back to back without a bogey at Pebble Beach," Jacobsen said, shaking his head in disbelief. "To me, that's hall of fame stuff. The key to a win like this is handling your emotions from deep down inside. That is what is really satisfying -- hitting the ball right down the middle of the fairway when I had to, right over the flag when I had to be."

For a man who had not won a tournament since the 1990 Bob Hope Chrysler Classic, this could have been some very treacherous terrain to negotiate. He was in the last group, starting the day three strokes behind the overnight leader, Kenny Perry, who wound up shooting par 72 and tying for third. But there was something serendipitous about the day, right from the start.

First, there was his pairing. Up until today, Jacobsen's relationship to this tournament had been as Jack Lemmon's long-suffering pro partner. Lemmon's quest to make the cut here, celebrity golf's version of the search for the Holy Grail, has always included Jacobsen. There was an amateur in tow today, but rather than Lemmon it was Hughes Norton, Duval's amateur partner and Jacobsen's longtime agent at International Management Group.

His presence served to calm Jacobsen, to help put him in his comfort zone. "Hughes and I are like brothers," Jacobsen said. "I really enjoyed watching him enjoy himself."

Then there was the quick start. Jacobsen never really had time to get nervous. He birdied the first three holes, Perry bogeyed the first and never recovered, and Jacobsen never relinquished the lead after taking it with his 20-foot putt at the third hole.

Davis Love 3d tried to put some heat on Jacobsen, but his charge stopped short when he failed to bogey the par-5 14th hole and when he missed a short putt at the 15th that dropped him to 13 under par. It was something of a frustrating weekend for Love. He had three eagles in two days, including one today at the sixth hole, where he nearly holed a 4-iron from 214 yards. But the important putts bounced away from the hole, and all that remained was for Jacobsen, who was six under for the day by the 12th hole, to par in.

That is always much easier to say than do at Pebble, especially when a player has been absent from the throat-tightening pressure of the last group for so long. But Jacobsen was very much up to the task. After he made a critical 20-foot birdie putt at the 12th, with the ball bouncing twice off spike marks and into the hole, he had the imperturbable look of a winner.

"Peter obviously played great," Love said. "If you shoot the kind of rounds that he shot the last two days, you're going to win. I'm glad he's back. All of us knew that it was too early for him to be up in that TV tower a couple of years ago.

"He just proved to himself and to everybody else that he belongs on the ground playing."

Jacobsen won $252,000 for the victory, which is more than he was making during his brief 1993 stint as an ABC-TV analyst. He also picked up a course record that has stood since 1977, when Tom Watson went around here in 15 under par. He was happy for the big payday but not about to delude himself about the record. After all, lift-clean-and-place was in effect this week.

"I'm certainly no Tom Watson," Jacobsen said. "I'm not a great player. But I'm somewhere in the thick of a bunch of good players."

That is right where he belongs, back on the ground, his playing career revived at the West Coast Fountain of Youth.

Photo: Peter Jacobsen took the lead for good by sinking his third straight birdie putt yesterday at Pebble Beach. (Associated Press)